There are 478,042,355 people with daily access to the internet in the United States, Japan, Germany, United Kingdom, South Korea, Canada, Australia, Taiwan, Netherlands, and Sweden. The rest of the world accounts for an additional 540,015,034 people. The ‘Internet is implicated in the new global activism far beyond reducing the costs of communication, or transcending the geographical and temporal barriers found in other communication media’ (Bennett 2003). A well designed viral social campaign could reach all 1.02 billion internet users in less than 18 steps – all starting from just one individual. The success of email chain letters is evidence merely of the potential for more advanced viral messages. Evidenced by Peretti’s (2003) accidental experiment in which email communication between Peretti and Nike was forwarded to a few friends and resulted in a global email distribution that may have reached as many as 15 million people

This is an excerpt from an early Shuru academic argument. The questions below must be expanded on to allow for inclusion into marketing materials, communication pieces, and growth models

  • How many internet and mobile phone users are there?
  • How many of these people live in liberal democracies?
  • Does the nature of the use in each country – i.e. the level of social integration – mean allow meaningful political discussion and coordination to occur?

If anyone has suggestions on this, please let me know through a comment or by email.